


We've Only Got so Much Time

by Myzic



Series: Whumptober 2020 [15]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, Dissociation, Fluff, Graphic Description, Hurt/Comfort, Not Beta Read, Other, Serious Injuries, Whump, Whumptober 2020, happy endings guys I promise, this is not a deathfic, we die like hyperion mayors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27296746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myzic/pseuds/Myzic
Summary: A bolt of electricity lodged itself— where Juno didn’t catch, because in the next moment, Peter was tipping toward the ground and he heard the slightest inhale of shocked breath. That little puff of breath, like Nureyev was scared, felt cold in his bones.And then he hit the ground, body crumpled in a way Juno shied away from in his mind for how unnaturally still he was.His foot scraped against the inside of his shoe as Juno halted in a single moment and he didn’t breathe. Couldn’t breathe.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Series: Whumptober 2020 [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956226
Comments: 12
Kudos: 86





	We've Only Got so Much Time

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warnings: graphic description of gore/injuries, dissociation, traumatic experience
> 
> Look out for yourselves

Juno had been scared at first, nervous upon embarking the Carte Blanche. Aside from the obvious reasons he’d had to be apprehensive (the man running beside him now for one), he wasn’t exactly a practiced criminal, and sure, there were more than a few misdemeanors on his rap sheet, but you weren’t really a citizen of Hyperion until you hit that nice solid ten. And if there happened to be another zero to the end of that number on his list, well, who was really counting.

This though, running for his life, a hoard of angry, armed enemies at his back. This was familiar territory and Juno almost grinned at Peter beside him, who glanced at him with a tight-lipped grimace, lips pulled back in a facsimile of a smile. So, he was upset the plan hadn’t gone to plan. 

That was fine. It wasn’t like the two of them had never improvised before.

“Where to, babe?” Juno panted, legs pumping. Something shot past his head, a blur of plasma too fast for him to follow but for the brief comet it made whizzing past.

“I don’t know,” he gritted out, and his usual lope was strained as Nureyev ran on less than graceful feet. “I memorized the layout of the hallways, not the surrounding gardens and forest area. For some reason, I didn’t think I would need to!”

They could start ducking through the trees— though they were unusually green and twiggy in a way that made him eyeball them— weave through the trunks and start to make their way back to the Carte Blanche, regroupe with the rest of the crew like that.

Juno turned to Nureyev to say exactly that and did so just in time to watch him

  
  


Stumble. 

Nureyev’s eyes stuttered forward, past what Juno could make out of the trail in front of them and he blanched, face draining of colour as his foot caught on something Juno didn’t see. It was surreal. He’d never seen Peter so much as trip before, and his breath caught somewhere between his inhale and his lungs.

Nureyev was righting himself, head tilted as he regained his footing.

A bolt of electricity lodged itself— where Juno didn’t catch, because in the next moment, Peter was tipping toward the ground and he heard the slightest inhale of shocked breath. That little puff of breath, like Nureyev was scared, felt cold in his bones.

And then he hit the ground, body crumpled in a way Juno shied away from in his mind for how unnaturally still he was.

His foot scraped against the inside of his shoe as Juno halted in a single moment and he didn’t breathe. Couldn’t breathe.

He stopped running and thinking— and maybe it was this lack of thought, the sheer reliance on nothing but instinct and the blaster in his hand, stinging his palm as he fired and fired and fired and kept firing that led to Juno not remembering much of the next few seconds. He ducked and weaved and kept releasing blast after blast as their pursuers caught up to him until he pulled the trigger to release another charge of electrical energy, and didn’t react to the thud of the body on the ground, already turning to take aim at his next target.

But he was alone, save for the sting of a shot that burnt dully against the side of his head and the slumped bodies surrounding him. He reached down for the only one that mattered to him, and the sight of a smoking black hole seared and bleeding— too much blood, there was so  _ much _ of it— made his veins pump with icen lead.

Now, Juno sucked in a breath all at once and fumbled for his comms. His call went through on the first ring and he could have wept with relief if not for how anything wet seemed to have frozen within his chest.

“Rita,” he gasped out, “Rita, we— I need help, Ransom’s down and he’s really hurt. I—I need backup, anything.”

“Mistah Steel?” Her worry was no less for the metal it came through, “Did you say Mistah Ransom’s hurt?” Typing filled his eardrum for a second. Her voice came through again, miserable, a croak of graininess and apology, “I’m really sorry, Boss, but I don’t think we can land the ship where you are, an’ the Ruby 7 can’t drive through trees… or walls. If you can make it out front then—”

“Got it.” Juno flicked off the call, not because he was upset with her, but because if he had to listen to Rita speak in that small, sad tone for another second, the layer of normalcy he’d encased himself in was going to crumple, and that couldn’t happen right now. He still had to get Nureyev out of here.

His body was lighter than he expected, and Juno lifted him over his back and ran. There was nothing but the ground beneath his feet, slamming against his heels and he very carefully did not touch the wound on Nureyev’s back, mind blank of anything that told him he was making it worse, he was bleeding faster from all the movement, he was going to die in Juno’s arms and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

The white button-up shirt Nureyev wore was black with slick oil, his nose filling with the smell of rust, and his fingers dug into a back, the skin smooth, but chilled. Too cold.

And his feet hit the ground as fast as he could make them with a terror he didn’t quite feel and the knowledge that the man he loved was draining of life, liquid breath dripping down the path as he sprinted. He tried not to think of the bodies he had seen— his own face, pale, all flushes of life in the carpet around his head— and how Nureyev felt like that, completely non-reactive and quickly approaching glacial under his fingers.

He almost shot at the Ruby 7 when he saw it, blinded by the bright lights as it pulled up past gates Juno had wrenched open. He carried Nureyev into the backseat and didn’t look to see who was driving.

“He’s been shot,” Juno said, and his voice sounded flat even to his own ears. 

“To the hospital, then.” The Big Guy returned, and he didn’t decipher his glance in the mirror. Nureyev was face-down in his lap. Something beeped and whistled to his left, and a towel fell out of the seat compartment beside him.

He pressed it to Nureyev’s wound. A little silver pole emerged from the opening and pushed his hands down harder, retreating back into the seat as he complied and Juno was leaning forward pressing down with all his weight on the hole on Nureyev’s shoulder blade. He stared as the towel slowly bloomed with blood under his hands, taking absent note of the bright crimson stains on his hands that he could now see in the lights of the car.

There was a throbbing below his neck like his heart was throwing itself against his ribcage, pinging around his chest cavity like a pinball, some fluttery panicked feeling locked away within his body. Juno shoved it down further and gasped with the brief world-stopping palpitation that shivered through him and spat him out the other side.

The Ruby 7 came to a halt, and Juno didn’t know what to do, could barely remind himself to breathe past the feeling of his hands pushing all the blood inside Nureyev’s back. He willed his palms to pulse with life past the clammy feeling of his fingers sticking together.

“I’m going to get someone inside,” The Big Guy pulled open the back door, “keep going, Juno.” As if he had any other real choice. It did mean that he didn’t have to look at anything else right now though, that he could focus on this one task— keep Nureyev alive.

The statement sounded like a paradox. Impossible, unsolvable because it wasn’t meant to be. The chicken couldn’t come before the egg, Nureyev couldn’t die because— because. 

He couldn’t. Juno believed in the certainty of this the same way he knew Mars revolved around the sun, the way children believed in their parents, the way Mick Mercury kept making his futile calendar. It just was.

Peter Nureyev was a hard man to imagine dying, despite everything pointing to the contrary, and part of that was how  _ alive _ he was. Nureyev couldn’t die because Juno had just gotten him back, because he smiled at him with the slightest hint of his upper teeth like he couldn’t help the lift of his top lip, because this morning he’d been snappish and irritable and Juno hadn’t asked him about it, because any world without this man in it was one darker than the world Juno wanted to live in.

It was a child’s logic. People didn’t die because you didn’t love them, they died in spite of it. And Juno knew this— had lived with it since nineteen— but he had to think Nureyev wasn’t going to die or else he would drown in the voice inside him that chanted  _ nononononononono  _ like a prayer and a howl.

There was a hand on his shoulder, and it shocked his eyes from his hands with its warmth when all Juno could feel was piercingly cold from his fingers to his elbows, and somewhere deep in his chest, a frozen star.

“Hello, Juno was it? I need to get that man into this stretcher.” The paramedic guided him into moving Nureyev onto the pulley, another tall woman at their side, and then they were running through the parking lot toward the hospital, Juno’s hands unfeeling with both pressure and the coolness of his blood.

He burst through the doors, and everything was so bright in here after the dark of the night it seared his eyes. “If you could remove your hands, Sir,” someone had their hands on top of his and he stared at them unblinking. They wanted him to do what? Juno was the only thing keeping Nureyev from bleeding out—

Large hands tugged gently at his arms and for a second he tensed. The touch was familiar after a moment, and Juno let the Big Guy guide his arms away from Nureyev. He was so

Still.

And then the stretcher was pushed behind another set of doors, people rushing toward the metal bars at its side, racing it away, and he was gone.

“Juno,” The Big Guy had a hand on him, and it eclipsed his entire shoulder, “he’s going to be alright. You should wash up. And… know that I am here for you.”

“Right,” he said. There was still this energy in his veins, urging him to do something, keep Nureyev breathing, but there was nowhere for it to go. He didn’t feel tired at all. Juno felt the knees of his pants, cold and soggy with blood slowly turning the cuffs crisp. “Thanks.”

The heels of his palms were sore, bruised from pushing down so hard for so long and Juno absentmindedly pressed a thumb to the skin to feel its ache.

  
  
  
  


~   
  


The back of this chair was too damn cushy. His butt sank too far into it for him to sit comfortably and Juno kept having to readjust his weight to stay balanced in the middle of it. 

That was why he missed Nureyev opening his eyes, the first sign of consciousness after two days of nothing but robotic beeps and the professional murmurs of doctors. Juno looked up at the second sign, a deep inhale as Nureyev turned his beautiful, wonderfully  _ bright  _ eyes on him and they looked at each other.

Something started to well up in his chest, and he pressed a button on the bed before Nureyev could say anything. “Duke just woke up in room 278, Doctor.” Juno stopped pressing the button long enough to talk to Nureyev before the doctor got there, “Your name is Duke Rose. Old alias, I know, but it should be easy for you to remember at least.”

“Juno,” Nureyev caressed the word, and Juno almost broke right there from the tender inflection spilling from his mouth, like it was the only word he ever cared enough to say. “What’s happened— the thing. In my pocket—”

“Taken care of,” he assured. The item they’d stolen had been snuck out by himself after the surgery and was lying in Buddy’s vault aboard the Carte Blanche now. He wasn’t sure if he was annoyed or fond that the second thing to emerge from Nureyev’s mouth after days of unconsciousness was their mission objective.

He stepped out of the room as Nureyev’s doctor rushed in through the door. The black-haired woman shut the door behind her, saying something about patient confidentiality Juno didn’t bother to remember past the seconds she spoke them.

In the hall, he took the time to steady his breathing, fighting to stay calm. The others had been shooting him these looks over the past few days, Buddy had sat him down yesterday on the Carte Blanche after dragging him away from Nureyev’s bedside, a cup of tea ready for him as she mused the benefits of crying in stressful times and how it could be healthy to express your emotions.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t tried, because Juno did, had sat over the toilet clenching his gut and screwing up his face and— nothing. He had an idea why. Right now, his heart pounded distantly as it did when Nureyev was bleeding out in his hands and it felt like he had been living in the same moment for three days, a constant washout of colour and feeling draining his surroundings.

The door creaked open and outside stepped the doctor who nodded at him as he re-entered the room. 

Nureyev was sitting up in the bed now, looking tired and stiff, which he chalked up to the bullet wound. “Juno,” he glanced at him, something in his tone relieved and… guilty. “I—I’m sorry about my collapse. I was off my game that day and—” He’d reached for Juno’s hand and he rested his fingers in Nureyev’s palm and the words he said after that were cut off.

Because at last, Juno was  _ safe _ .

He took a breath at the feeling of soft fingers and sobbed on the exhale, big fat tears streaking down his face in salty, hot rivers. “Shit, N— Rose. I… was so  _ scared _ ,” His throat was thick and heavy, and he could feel his nose begin to run unattractively with mucus. He sniffled. “You’re alive. Thank god,  _ you’re alive _ .” 

He let himself feel it now, the terror that had pounded down on him in blows, the mindless push to survive that made the air taste of biting dread, sharp and choking.

Juno couldn’t stop crying and he gasped on the hiccuping sobs that poured from his throat, flooding out all at once now. Nureyev’s thumb ran over his hand and he cried harder from the heat of it, so at odds with the freezing deadened state of himself for what seemed like forever.

“Darling, Juno. It’s okay, I’m here. It’s—” Nureyev’s tone faltered, unsure, “I survived. I’m so sorry you had to go through that.” His voice broke in the last sentence and Juno warbled a watery chuckle.

“You almost died, don’t… don’t apologize for it.” Now the tears began to trickle to a stop, and Juno felt deep exhaustion lay over him like a heavy blanket, fatigue muffling his thoughts.

“I am sorry for the worry I caused you,” Juno shifted to the front of his seat to get closer and closed his eyes as Nureyev put a hand to his temple, “And I’m sorry for how much I scared you.”

He sighed, leaning forward on the bed to cross his arms over Nureyev’s legs. “Not your fault,” Juno told him, “I just… for a second I thought we had already had our ‘last times.’ Last ‘I love you,’ last time I saw you smile, last time you existed, and I… was so scared for a world without you in it.” Nureyev’s face quivered with a sorrow Juno knew was all for him, and he pushed forward. There would be a day when Nureyev’s sadness could be for himself. They would get there, Juno would make sure of it. “I don’t want any of your last times, honey. Not for a lifetime, maybe never.”

Nureyev hesitated. “I can’t promise you ‘never.’ But if I could make this up to you now, I would.”

“I know,” he told him, wishing that he could promise it nonetheless. “Just… do your best not to die.”

He expected a laugh, an admission that Nureyev was already doing that, but instead, he answered with surprising seriousness. “I will make it my utmost priority not to die for you, Juno.” Nureyev lifted Juno’s hand and pressed a kiss to it like it was a vow, and his hand tingled from where his lips had imprinted themselves. “For what it’s worth, I’m very glad to have made it back to you.”

A thought ran through his mind at the words, and it made his blood run cold. This had happened before, a little different sure— but he had never brought it up again, never apologized for it. Juno inhaled. It was probably about time he did that, wasn’t it? Now, he had seen the other side of it, and he did not like what he found reflected back at him.

“This— I was helpless. I couldn’t save you, and I thought you were going to die— and that scared me more than anything.”

From the silence that filled the air between them Nureyev’s thoughts had turned in the same directions as Juno’s. “A bit like… standing on the other side of a Martian tomb with a bomb in it and someone you love very dearly inside.”

“Yeah,” he swallowed, and it was dry in his throat. “A bit.”

“Not completely the same, of course. If you threw in a willingness to die and some self-sacrificing tendencies, then maybe.” Nureyev finished nonchalantly, but his eyes were twin suns, fierce and focused.

“I never apologized for that, did I?”

“Well, you’ve changed a lot since then.” He said it like it was a challenge.  _ Prove it to me _ , his eyes dared.

“That— that’s not a reason,” Juno shook his head, “there is no reason, no good one, anyway. I was in a bad place… which you already know. And, I’m sorry,” he said simply, “Sorry for scaring you, for making you watch me try and go out in one last blaze of glory.”

“It— what you did in that tomb,” Nureyev closed his eyes as his mouth creased into a brief grimace, “I’m never going to forget that feeling, the terror of knowing you were just going to  _ let yourself die _ , Juno. And though I am sorry you had to see me like that, go through that, I can’t help but think it was worth it if it means my own piece of mind that you will never willingly  _ sacrifice _ ,” he spat the word with no small amount of hatred, “yourself again.”

“No.” Juno said firmly, “no, I won’t. I’m different— I’m not the same person.”

“I know.” And when Nureyev said it like that, with such unshakeable certainty, he believed it too.

“Right, I just…” Juno took a shaky breath, “I wanted to promise you that this me, this Juno Steel has no plans to leave you.”

“Juno,” Nureyev said breathlessly, and he couldn’t quite hide the wonderment in his words. Juno flushed and groaned into the bed.

“God, don’t say it like that,” he grinned, hoping Nureyev would always say his name the way he did then— like he loved him. Juno could believe it. “That’s not fair, I can’t even use my favourite nickname for you in public.”

“You have a favourite—” Nureyev laughed suddenly as understanding dawned on his face, incredulous, “My name? That’s so—”

“Sure, it’s cheesy, whatever. Maybe you’re rubbing off on me,” And despite the way his nose was blocked, and his cheeks were still a little sticky, he smiled back.

“I was going to say ‘sweet,’ Juno.”

Juno lifted his head and with all the tenderness he could muster, kissed Nureyev’s forehead. He buried his head in his neck, tired and wrung-out and so relieved he ached with it, reveling in the feeling of strands of hair brushing against his cheeks and the flush of life in the crook of his neck.

“Hey, Nureyev?” he murmured quietly into his ear.

“Mmm?” Juno could hear the tired relief of a reunion and a recovery in that one mutter.

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Juno.” He could also hear the pleased grin shaping Nureyev’s words as he spoke, turning impossibly loving around his name rather than the three-word promise. Juno closed his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Their favourite nicknames for each other are just their names. They like relationshippy pet names too, but the way Nureyev says ‘Juno’ is pretty much an endearment anyway so…
> 
> Welp! That’s all, folks. Holy cow, I rlly did whumptober. Fyi, no NaNoWriMo for me and instead I will be breaking. I might still do some fic, but nothing like what I did for this month. Am tired, break time. So glad for the progress this month has forced on me and happy to be active in the community now!
> 
> Come find me @themagicmistress on Tumblr!


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